Nile cruise: Day 1, Aswan

We'd been waiting for Steve and Sara to go on a Nile cruise and we're so glad we did! It was fun to share such a special experience with them. The number of operators and boats on the Nile is a bit overwhelming but, on recommendation, we went with Abercrombie & Kent and I think it's safe to say we were wowed....by the service, the accommodations, the food.....oh, and the ancient Egyptian sites we saw along the way too! :)

Getting on the boat:


Some more photos from the boat at its dock in Aswan that first day and night:
















During that first afternoon, we visited a few sites in the Aswan area. The first was to the granite quarry where so many of the granite structures in ancient Egypt came from. There is still an obelisk there, unfinished, which was abandoned after a flaw in the stone was discovered. This unfinished obelisk gives archaeologists important clues as to how the ancient Egyptians could possibly carve something so immense out of stone.


Here is the granite bed from which another obelisk had been carved. You can see the trenches which quarrymen pounded out with 10 lb. balls of dolerite. To break the obelisk away from the granite, they believe that quarrymen hammered in pieces of wood on the underside of the obelisk, then soaked them in water; the expansion created cracks. You can see the parallel shafts below where they placed the wood.


Then we went to the island of Philae where a huge temple to Isis was built in the Ptolomaic period and used through Roman times as well. It was a beautiful afternoon.













































These were inscriptions from some of the scholars who accompanied Napoleon's expedition in 1798!


This temple was located above the site of the first Aswan dam and so after 1902, it was almost completely covered by water for most of the year. When construction for the new High Dam was being planned, UNESCO along with the Egyptian government launched a campaign to save Philae and other important monuments from being submerged forever. The entire temple site was dismantled and reassembled, stone by stone, on a nearby, higher, island between 1975-1980. Amazing!

After coming back to the boat, we were served afternoon tea in the lounge:


and one photo from dinner that night. We decided we could get used to this life. :)